Quiet As A Nun Part 2

'Oh, I'm sorry, Reverend Mother, I didn't realise you had a visitora"' A slightly breathless voice behind me. But I did not quite like to turn round and stare. I waited for Mother Ancilla to introduce me. But Mother Ancilla continued to gaze over my head at her visitor with barely concealed annoyance.

'As you can see, Sister, I'm really rather busy at the moment,' was all she said. The unseen visitor - a nun, evidently, but I knew no more than that - departed.

Mother Ancilla frowned. I noticed that she suspended speaking until there could be no question of the recent intruder overhearing us.

Then at last she explained. How Rosabelle Powerstock, in her new life as Sister Miriam of the Order of the Tower of Ivory, had never shown any particular interest in her previous wealth. She took her vow of poverty extremely seriously. Naturally she brought a dowry with her to the convent as all the nuns did.

'A substantial dowry,' said Mother Ancilla, nodding. The language laboratory? The swimming pool? I did not like to interrupt her by asking. 'Our Blessed Lord saw to it that at last we were able to mend the chapel roof, which has needed the most expensive repairs since the day of Reverend Mother Felix.' Ah. I felt reproved for the secular nature of my speculations. But beyond that she had renounced the vast trusts once administered in her name, the beneficiaries being a series of Catholic charities and educational projects.

Of course, Sister Miriam had made the usual will required by a member of the O.T.I., leaving the residue of her dowry to that community. But that in itself was not expected to be a great fortune. And what with chapel roofs and other religious luxuries ... In the years which had pa.s.sed since dear Sir Gilbert's death - his dear death, I almost thought Mother Ancilla would say - no-one had had the faintest idea that Rosabelle Powerstock still retained outright owners.h.i.+p of every single inch of the so-called convent grounds of the Blessed Eleanor's. It was, it seemed, an oversight on the lawyers' part that the trust deed which covered the buildings did not in fact cover the lands. A technicality.

'One can't help wondering why, if they were to make the mistake in the first place, Our Blessed Lord ever guided them to discover it so many years later,' observed Mother Ancilla with something approaching waspishness. But discover it, they had. And in their interminable way had begun the long, long process to rectify it. To establish the deed by which Rosabelle Powerstock would hand over the grounds to the convent, as once her father had officially handed over the buildings.

'She agreed to do so?' I interrupted.

'At first. Without hesitation. I told you that Sister Miriam cared nothing for the things of this world. In her right mind.'

'But lately, there was a change. She wanted to give these same lands away?'

'Oh, those lawyers, they took so long. And wrote so many letters. And came to see her, and insisted on explaining to her what she was doing. As if Sister Miriam was doing anything. She was simply being a good nun. And putting her signature to a piece of paper which should have been over and done with years ago. And then she became ill.' 'And everything changed.'

'She changed. Nothing round her changed in the slightest.' Mother Ancilla began to speak more rapidly. 'It was after she saw your programme on television. She was convalescing at the time. She wanted to give it to the poor. Not just any poor, Jemima, but those poor people in the demolished houses of Powers Square. The Powers Projectors they call themselves. She talked of the rich man and the needle's eye. But she was, alas, mad. We know that now - too late. I thought she wrote to you. I thought she must have written to you. But somehow she got in touch with that man, the leader of the demonstrators or the residents' a.s.sociation or whatever they were called. She wrote to him. She offered him our lands. She said they were hers to give. Alexander Skarbek his name was.'

Alexander Skarbek. The man I had secretly found more sympathetic than the directors of MGV. Secretly and not only because of my job but because he was Tom's bete noire. Tom once said Alexander Skarbek existed to give good causes a bad name. A man without scruple, at least in Tom's opinion: it depended of course upon what your own scruples were. A man who certainly possessed qualities of decision and leaders.h.i.+p. A man, a fanatic, sufficiently convinced of the rightness of his cause, who would not have hesitated to accept such an offer, even made by a half-crazy nun. A man who would also have understood exactly how to beat the Powerstock family lawyers at their own game. Had he not defeated the combined efforts of the Ministry and local Council in his efforts over the Greatpark Housing Estate?

Jemima knows: but I had known nothing of this, even if my programme had been responsible for touching it all off.

'She talked of Christ's poverty. How she would settle at our gates like Lazarus and teach us the true meaning of the Christian message.'

I could see that Mother Ancilla in her capacity as Dives, would scarcely welcome such a Lazarus as Alexander Skarbek at her gates.

'But in the event, Mother Ancilla, it didn't happen,' I heard myself say in my best unemotional manner. 'For I gather she never changed her will. Blessed Eleanor's inherited everything she still possessed.' The old nun shook her head. 'So the community has - forgive me for putting it so bluntly - by the untimely death of Sister Miriam Powerstock acquired the lands for itself.' I almost said: 'Timely death.'

Mother Ancilla did not seem to notice. She merely nodded. Behind her head there was a reproduction picture of the Virgin and Child in a bevelled burnished gilt frame. By Lippo Lippi. That had not changed since my day. But then Lippo Lippi could hardly be said to date. The Virgin looked infinitely sorrowful. But detached. As though she knew that all the concern she felt for the pitiful human scene taking place beneath her calm sad gaze could not alter the course of the stream of human pa.s.sion by one iota. Her high round brow, the tendrils of her perfectly delineated golden hair, gave her an implacable beauty.

Mother Ancilla's brow on the other hand was not visible beneath the white band of her wimple, and no tendrils escaped from this prison. Any hair that did show would be grey and wispy, if not white. Nuns' hair had been a preoccupation when we were at school. The delicious thrill of shock when Sister Thomas, a young nun, had appeared in cla.s.s with a distinct curl of brown hair showing. She must have dressed in a hurry, poor child. As nuns were not allowed to look in mirrors, she was probably unaware of her solecism. Another delicious thrill at the idea of Mother Ancilla's tart regret when the offending wisp was glimpsed. It all added up to the fact that nuns were not bald and did not shave their heads; they simply cut their hair conveniently short.

Gazing at Mother Ancilla now beneath the tumble-locked Virgin, I found that I had not altogether lost my preoccupation with nuns' hair. Or their appearance generally.

'You know, my child, I have not been very well recently,' said Mother Ancilla. I realised that there had been quite a silence between us, although to me her little room - even the headmistress's study was not allowed to waste s.p.a.ce - had seemed filled by a voice from the past.

'Supposing a nun just refused to have her hair cuta"' Rosa, young and audacious. But one day Rosa's own hair had been chopped off. That unruly brown curling hair I loved, hair which I used sometimes to brush furiously. Cut into the shape of Sister Miriam. Buried forever, first beneath the severe black headdress, now in the perpetual blackness of the grave.

Back to Mother Ancilla, another blackness and the shadow of her health.

'I'm sorry to hear that, Mother.' The conventional gush. 'Don't be sorry. Our Lord has been very good to me. He has allowed me to spend many years at the head of this convent, trying to serve Him. I cannot complain if now He feels that my work here is over. In many ways,' she paused, 'I shall be glad to lay down the burden.'

'Oh surely things aren't quite so serious.' Another easy riposte. Then with more conviction: 'I can't imagine this convent without you. You've made it what it is. You are the Blessed Eleanor's to most of us.'

'Nonsense' - briskly. 'We are none of us indispensable. I should be gravely wanting in humility if I believed what you have just said to be true.' But under the air of reproof she did look slightly pleased. I was reminded of a recently retired Trades Union leader, appearing on my programme. I had made the same sort of observation along the lines of 'You are the Union'. He too could eliminate ambition but not pleasure in the success of his work. Another admirable martinet, I suppose. At any rate the camera had caught the fleeting expression of self-satisfaction. There was no camera to catch Mother Ancilla's momentary pleasure, and now she was frowning.

'Like Simeon, I would wish to make haste to be gone. If only I could leave the community as it should be .. . Not divided, frightened.'

She began to speak much faster again.

'Jemima, something is going on here. It is not simply the death of Sister Miriam, nor the reports in the Press. Although obviously those shook the community gravely. I feel it. I have been, you know, nearly fifty years in religion. I should have my Golden Jubilee next summer if...' A pause in the rush of words, and then she dashed on, 'I will be frank with you. If I live that long. I have been warned by our doctor that I may not. That I will not, unless I take things easier. That means of course retirement: maybe to our little house at Oxford. Maybe to our convalescent home in Dorset, built incidentally on part of the Powerstock estate. Mindful of my vow of obedience I would go any time. I should go willingly. But how can I leave the community now? When they area"' A long pause. A single sonorous word: 'Troubled.'

'Jemima, I want you to help us. I told you there isn't much time.' It was a return to the old voice of authority. 'I want you to find out what is going on here amongst us. No, please don't say no, not immediately. I have prayed long and earnestly about this. Think about it.'

One bell tolled in the distance. One bell for Reverend Mother.

'My bell.' Mother Ancilla arose and with surprising alacrity for a sick woman approaching seventy, moved to the door, automatically putting one finger in the tiny holy water stoup and crossing herself. 'I have arranged for you to have lunch in the refectory with the children, dear Jemima. They are thrilled at the prospect, naturally. They are all great fans of yours. Sister Clare will give you coffee later in the Nuns' Parlour. A visit to the chapel, perhaps?'

I smiled noncommittally. Things were going altogether too fast. I wanted to retain what control I still had of the situation. The chapel represented a form of capitulation I was definitely not prepared to make.

My last sight of Mother Ancilla was of a figure like a little black bird skimming down the corridor. The corridor itself was plain except for a series of alcoves containing incongruously garish statues of a.s.sorted saints.

'Miss Sh.o.r.e,' said a gentle voice more or less at my elbow. I realised that a little nun, hardly more than a novice from her face, had been waiting for some minutes to speak to me. With her twitching mouth and neat nose, she looked rather like an unhappy rabbit.

'I'm Sister Edward. I must talk to you.' Sister Edward: the name rang a bell. Yes, the nun who had so unfortunately not revealed Sister Miriam's crazy plan of self-purgation. And only sounded the alarm about the locked tower when it was too late. I also realised from her voice that Sister Edward had been that intruder in the headmistress's study whose appearance had been so unwelcome.

'Talk away,' I replied with false cheerfulness, my voice unnecessarily loud.

'Not here.'

At that moment the bell sounded again, three strokes then four. Sister Edward literally blanched.

'My bell. I must go.' All the same she continued to stand twisting her hands. 'They're after me. They don't want me to talk to youa"'

'Sister Edward, I really thinka"'

By way of reply, Sister Edward dragged me into the narrow alcove beside me.

'She killed her,' she said, panting, and poking her little face into mine. 'She wanted her dead. So she killed her.'

'Who? I might have said 'What' with equal force. I had no idea what Sister Edward was saying.

'Why Mother Ancilla of course.' The rabbit's face was turned up in innocent surprise. 'Mother Ancilla killed poor Sister Miriam.' The next moment Sister Edward was in her turn skimming down the corridor towards the nuns' part of the building. Another black bird. I knew that it was Sister Edward. But of course from the back it might just as well have been Mother Ancilla or any other nun. They really did look exactly alike.

I was left alone except for a statue of St Antony holding the Infant Jesus in his arms.

4.

A balanced programme Lunch in the refectory did not last long. Actually the refectory had been turned into a cafeteria since my day, complete with counter and plastic cases for food. All the nuns behind the counter had beaming rather flushed faces. We used to divide nuns into Snow Whites and Rose Reds, as the religious life (or the wimple) seemed to have the effect of sending their complexions to one or other extreme. These were all Rose Reds.

The food was delicious. I said as much to the girls sitting with me at table. They all affected considerable surprise.

'Would you like a second helping, Miss Sh.o.r.e?' enquired a girl at the end of the table politely. It was the first remark she had made throughout the meal. She had a long, interesting face, with a straight nose, like a crusader modelled on a tomb. As she brought back the plate, she bent over my chair and said quite low: 'This was Sister Miriam's favourite pudding as well, you know.'

Afterwards I asked Mother Ancilla who she was.

'Why, that's Margaret Plantaganet!' cried Mother Ancilla. She sounded delighted at my cleverness in picking out such an eligible candidate for my attention. 'Lady Margaret Plantaganet,' she added in pa.s.sing a" no-one could throw away a t.i.tle like Mother Ancilla. 'The Bosworths' daughter.'

'It's not a very Catholic name,' I muttered. In my irritation at having given Mother Ancilla such an opening, I quite forgot to ask how a mere schoolgirl could have known of my friends.h.i.+p with Rosa.

'It's true that her mother wasa"' and Mother Ancilla mentioned some incredibly grand-sounding Italian name which I had genuinely never heard before, although I should have tried to look blank in any case. 'Lord Bosworth is a convert. But Margaret herself looks pure Plantaganet, don't you think?'

It was clear that Mother Ancilla regarded the presence of Margaret Plantaganet at the Convent of Blessed Eleanor as a latter-day triumph for the Counter-Reformation.

I did not go to the chapel.

I did receive coffee from Sister Clare in the Nuns' Parlour. Sister Clare was extremely plump, and the sight of her swelling front beneath her black habit tempted me to wonder anew whether nuns wore bras (another perennial topic of discussion, and one which as far as I was concerned had never reached a satisfactory conclusion). If we had been on television I would have asked her, 'Sister, there is one question I know our female viewers are dying to ask...' Everyone would have expected something about s.e.xual frustration; instead of which I would have continued: 'In an age when many women are boasting of burning their bras ...' and so forth. We were not on television. I put temptation from me. It was unlikely that Vatican II had left the topic untouched in any case, whatever the mode when I was at school.

To distract myself, I reapplied my attention to the pasteboard brides in and out of their portfolio. At least I could picture Lady Margaret Plantaganet featuring here in a few years' time, stern in white, on the arm of some suitably aristocratic bridegroom. And the convent would send them a wedding present of table napkins embroidered by the nuns in which the Plantaganet arms mingled with those of the Blessed Eleanor ... This agreeable fantasy lasted until I had finished my coffee.

Shortly after that I made it clear to Mother Ancilla, kindly but firmly, that Jemima Sh.o.r.e, Investigator, was a character who existed more or less for the benefit of television. I could not undertake a special secret mission to iron out the problems of Blessed Eleanor's. My encounter with Sister Edward had nevertheless given me an inkling as to the nature of these problems. Clearly a host of celibate women cooped up together could ferment from time to time like yeast. In the middle ages Sister Edward would have seen visions. Nowadays she merely accused her superior of murder. She probably watched too many thrillers on television. The gift of an old girl. In St Joseph's Sitting Room.

As I drove back to London, I felt that the long fingers of the past had stretched out to grasp me. And I had eluded them. I was sorry for Mother Ancilla. But I could not help her.

Besides, I was shortly off to Yugoslavia with Tom.

Two days later, he took me for dinner in our favourite restaurant, a trattoria behind Victoria station, discreet, convenient for the House of Commons. I wore my treasured Hanae Mori dress. A motif of scattered hearts. The heart: my lucky symbol. I tended to scribble a heart on my notes to Tom. Not so lucky tonight, it seemed. For I was not in fact off to Yugoslavia. Or at any rate, not with him. The Welfare Now Group, on which Tom had lavished so much of his prodigious idealism, was calling for urgent meetings with the Minister before the autumn session of Parliament. In the expectation that these meetings would be unsatisfactory - and they always were - there was to be a rally in Trafalgar Square. Tom of course would be one of the princ.i.p.al speakers. His tall thin figure, bowing slightly in the gale of his own words, was an inseparable part of the W.N.G. platform.

'It's not that I can't get out of it,' Tom said unhappily. 'It's just that I don't want to. We've got to make them see that our demands are reasonable. You understand what I mean, darling.'

As a matter of fact I did not understand. It occurred to me that the Archangel Gabriel with the resources of Maecenas would not be able to satisfy the demands of the W.N.G. But this was not a time for saying so.

'Tell me we shall go to Yugoslavia one day.' My voice had a mournful spaniel's note which I disliked.

'I promise.' Tom was a totally truthful person, even sometimes when I wished he wouldn't be. I believed him. Perhaps it was Tom's honesty that now compelled him to let drop the news that Carrie's mother was also unexpectedly altering her plans and coming over from the States. To me at a suffering distance, Carrie's mother had the power and caprices of a Byzantine Empress. Much of Carrie's innate disturbance of personality was laid by Tom at her door. Carrie's fear of having children for example: 'Can you wonder with the sort of mother that she had, that she doesn't want to take on the role herself?'

'Why don't you adopt a Vietnamese orphan pour encourager?

Tom looked reproachful. Vietnamese orphans were not subjects for humour. I was well aware of that. My own programme on the subject had been deadly serious. He also looked reproachful now when I murmured how convenient it must be for Carrie to have Tom with her after all to help stave off her mother's onslaughts. But I did not pursue the point.

That night was perhaps the tenderest we had ever known. It was also a whole night. I do not know what story, if any, Tom told Carrie. She was quite forgotten by us both, along with everything else.

The next morning at breakfast I told Tom all about Mother Ancilla and the Order's inheritance and Rosabelle's will and her intention to leave the land away from the Order. I did not, of course, mention poor crazy Sister Edward's accusation. Then, out of nowhere, or so it seemed at the time, we quarrelled violently about Rosa's right to give away the convent lands. I felt buffeted by a series of prejudices, my own and his. On the one hand Tom had clearly not overcome his innate revulsion for convents, nuns and their like. The words 'black crows', although not spoken again, were implicit in several of his remarks. On the other hand, he criticised anew a social system which allowed an individual -Rosa - to own so much land.

I pointed out several times that Rosa's owners.h.i.+p was an anomaly, which it was intended that time would set right. Community owners.h.i.+p after all was exactly what Sir Gilbert Powerstock had in mind when he handed over the buildings to the Order. I also pointed out that the nuns had worked the lands honourably for many years - generations of them - long before Sir Gilbert bought it in fact and, like the working-cla.s.s residents of the Powers Estate, were now in danger of seeing the fruit of their labours handed over to another body. All this because of an arbitrary accident of birth which gave Rosabelle Powerstock the legal - if not moral - right to do so.

'Well, she's dead now. Your old friend. So you can't argue with her,' replied Tom heatedly. 'Mind you, I still think there's something fishy about her death. A little too convenient if you ask mea"'

It was those last words that did it. That, and the cruel awareness of three blank weeks in my life. A week later, I was once again driving down to Churne. It was precisely the date on which I should have been boarding a plane to Dubrovnik with Tom, I reflected, as I pressed into the deep countryside. Various skeletal trees reminded me that winter was coming. How quickly autumn pa.s.sed! Like every pleasure, it seemed momentary.

It was dark when I arrived at the convent. The same small hedgehog of a nun let me in at the gates. On the telephone I had been brief and reserved to Mother Ancilla. I merely told her that after all I had decided to accept her offer of a few weeks' relaxation at Blessed Eleanor's. To the curious, it might be hinted that I was contemplating a programme on women in religious orders in the modern world, i.e. post Vatican II.

'I am not sure that we are the best example of such changes,' said Mother Ancilla drily down the telephone. 'A great deal of prayer and thought has persuaded us that to move with the times is not necessarily to move according to the will of G.o.d. Or indeed the intentions of Our Blessed foundress.'

'Precisely. A balanced programme. In other words, it takes all sorts.'

I did not see Mother Ancilla that evening. The girls had already eaten. The small nun - Sister Damian - brought me supper on a tray in the Nuns' Parlour. The food was delicious. Each dish not only tasted good but was also exquisitely presented, reminding me of food in j.a.pan. Later Sister Damian took me to the guest corridor. Botticelli (a Virgin), t.i.tian (a Madonna with Child) and Fra Angelico (an Annunciation) were represented on the walls. By the bed I observed two books. One, bound in black leather, turned out to be the Treasury of the Blessed Eleanor, a work whose name if not its contents, was familiar to me. The other, still in its dust jacket, was the recent autobiography of a prominent Roman Catholic. I knew him from a rather unsuccessful programme of mine about birth control.

Under the circ.u.mstances, I picked up the Treasury of Blessed Eleanor.

I read: 'As a Tower points towards heaven, so should a man build his whole life in the direction of G.o.d. Yet even the highest Tower can never touch the sky; nevertheless man by the grace of G.o.d and his own Faith may expect to reach heaven one day. This is the supreme mercy of G.o.d, to set man higher than his highest buildings, to make of him a living Tower who will one day touch the sky.'

Towers clearly obsessed Blessed Eleanor. She had been born a French princess and briefly married in youth to an ageing English king. Childless widowhood had clearly suited her; she had made no effort to marry again, but had retired thankfully to Churne Palace which formed part of her marriage jointure. To the palace she had affixed the buildings of a large convent, and founded the Order of the Tower of Ivory.

It wasn't quite clear if that name actually dated from the lifetime of the Blessed Eleanor. There was some suggestion that she had already thought of commemorating her own name. Would the nuns have been called Queen Eleanor's Own, I wondered, as a modern regiment is named for royalty? Be that as it might, the O.T.I, as it had become, was certainly a very old foundation in Mother Ancilla's words. Even the vicissitudes of the Reformation period, the years of persecution, had been overcome without extinguis.h.i.+ng the Order altogether. The Order itself transferred to Belgium, the buildings, less mobile, transferred to the owners.h.i.+p of a friendly Catholic-sympathising family. Then in the happier times of the nineteenth century and Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, the O.T.I. was ready to flourish on English soil all over again.

As Reverend Mother, Blessed Eleanor continued to inhabit Churne Palace, leaving her nuns to the somewhat lesser state of their convent. Even her retreats had not exactly been taken in the bosom of the community. That was where the tower - Blessed Eleanor's Retreat -came in. Now all that was left standing of the ancient foundation, it had originally been constructed slightly apart from the convent for a sinister reason. Outside its extra thick walls, Rosa had ghoulishly a.s.sured me, the screams of the Blessed Eleanor, as she scourged herself remorselessly in penance for her sins, could not be heard.

'She did not want to be rescued from herself,' Rosa went on, large eyes opened wide. She loved to impress me with the more horrific details of her Faith. I s.h.i.+vered. It reminded me too vividly of the details of poor Rosa's own death: and I was not ready to think about those tonight. I should have to think about them and many other things tomorrow.

Let the Blessed Eleanor, dead for so many years, rest. And Rosa too. Requiescant in pace. But I could not wrench my thoughts so easily away from the pair of them. It came back to me, unbidden, that the Blessed Eleanor too had died in her tower. In her case there had been an Arthurian deathbed, with the dying woman carried to the tower by six black nuns, and laid on the stone flags.

I could not resist checking the story in the brief biography of the saint at the back of her Treasury. Yes, I was right. And there was something else too which I had forgotten. 'And then our blessed foundress called for her royal robes, the robes of a Queen of England and a Princess of France, and they brought them to her, whereon the lions and the lilies were splendidly entwined. Now good sisters attire me, she commanded them. And they wondered that she who had given up the riches of the world so willingly should call for them in the hour of her death. But she reproved them for their lack of understanding, saying, "Is it not thus in my finest raiment that I should go to meet my bridegroom, the King of Heaven?..."' And so on, till the Blessed Eleanor with a great many last words and admonitions and pious e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, finally expired. Leaving her body to perform those necessary miraculous feats of healing which ensured her beatification in the nineteenth century.

I felt rather more warmly towards the Blessed Eleanor after learning that she had insisted on dying dressed up in full royal gear. Personally, I was not deceived by the excuse she gave the nuns. Once a queen, always a queen. She wanted to sport those lions and lilies once more. Otherwise why preserve them all those years?

My attention was caught by something outside the narrow world of my own thoughts. Far away there was a small distinct sound. The sound of a door opening and shutting. No, the sound of swing doors being gently helped to close. There were two swing doors to the left and right of the guest corridor. One led to the children's dormitories and the other to the vast nuns' wing. That was quite an unknown area to me. Nevertheless I a.s.sumed it included a stairway directly to the chapel.

Then why was someone attempting to leave the nuns' wing as silently as possible, in order to descend to the chapel by the visitors' staircase? For I could now hear distinct soft steps on the flight outside my door.

It made no sense. It was not particularly late by my metropolitan standards. But it was extremely late by the standards of the convent. The whole place was plunged in darkness, except for the occasional light reflecting from a corridor window where the children slept. Moreover the night owl, whoever she was, was not moving in that busy rapid fas.h.i.+on of all the nuns, intent on not wasting time in the service of G.o.d. She was taking step by step very carefully, stopping occasionally as though to listen for any extraneous sounds.

I waited until I reckoned she must have reached the side door of the chapel. On an impulse, and without in any way thinking of what I was doing, I opened the door of my room and slipped out as silently as I could. I too ventured quietly, slowly, down the winding stairs. I touched the oak door to the chapel. It was not latched and pushed open in my hand. It made no sound at all as it swung forward.

At first the chapel seemed to be totally dark except for the red light of the sanctuary lamp, hanging in front of the altar. Then I realised that a group of candles were burning unevenly in front of a statue on my left. Some patronal feast day or other. I picked up one of the candles off its little spike and held it in front of me. I steadied it, and waited for my eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. I was quite sure I was not alone in the chapel, that the mysterious visitor could not have left by any other door, and must still be lurking in front of me in the shadows.

The strangeness of her silence grew. Why did she not speak? Or at least make some signal. As fear, for the first time, began to catch up with me, there was a rush of cold air behind me and my candle went out. At the same time I put my hand down against the first wooden pew to steady myself. I found my hand touching warm flesh.

I screamed.

5.